Earlier today President Trump delivered remarks surrounding the latest initiative to streamline government and bring efficiency to the air travel and commercial transportation industry.

[…] The previous administration spent over $7 billion trying to upgrade the system, and totally failed. Honestly, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. A total waste of money — $7 billion-plus-plus

The initiative is targeted to modernize Air Traffic Control and flight management systems.

12:02 P.M. EDT – [Transcript ] THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate everything and I appreciate you being here. But I especially want to thank Secretary Elaine Chao, Leader Kevin McCarthy — thank you, Kevin — Chairman Bill Shuster — thank you very much, Bill — and all the members of Congress — we have many of them here today — for joining us as we prepare to enter a great new era in American aviation. (Applause.) It’s about time, too, I can tell you.

But before discussing our plans to modernize air travel, I want to provide an update on our efforts to fix and modernize vital services for our veterans — our great, great veterans who we all love. For decades the federal government has struggled to accomplish something that should be very, very simple — seamlessly transferring a veteran’s medical records from the Defense Department to the veterans groups and to the VA. In recent years, it has taken not just days or weeks, but many months for the records to follow the veteran. This has caused massive problems for our veterans.

I’m very proud to say that we are finally taking steps to solve this situation once and for all. Secretary Shulkin announced this morning that the VA will announce and modernize its medical records to use the same system as the Department of Defense. No more complications. The records will now be able to follow the veteran when they leave service — meaning faster, better, and far better quality care. (Applause.) Thank you.

This is one of the biggest wins for our veterans in decades. And I congratulate Secretary Shulkin for making this very, very important decision. Thank you, Secretary. Appreciate it. I appreciate it. He’s done a great job. Stand up, Secretary. Where is Secretary Shulkin? What a great job. Thank you.

Of course, there is still much work to do, but today’s action shows the determined leadership and what it can accomplish — great, great reform. So, again, to David Shulkin, thank you. To all of our veterans who have a served this nation, a very, very special thank you. This is truly wonderful, really monumental reform, so important for our veterans. But it’s just the beginning.

We’re here today to discuss another issue that has gone unsolved for far too long. For too many years, our country has tolerated unacceptable delays at the airport, long wait times on the tarmac, and a slowing of commerce and travel that costs us billions and billions of dollars in lost hours and lost dollars themselves. Today, we are proposing to take American air travel into the future — finally. (Applause.)

Finally, right? Finally. It’s been a long time.

We’re proposing reduced wait times, increased route efficiency, and far fewer delays. Our plan will get you where you need to go more quickly, more reliably, more affordably and, yes — for the first time in a long time — on time. We will launch this air travel revolution by modernizing the outdated system of air traffic control. It’s about time. (Applause.)

Since the early days of commercial air service, the federal government has owned and operated the United States air traffic control system. Yet, more than a half a century later, the government is still using much of the exact same outdated technology.

At a time when every passenger has GPS technology in their pockets, our air traffic control system still runs on radar and ground-based radio systems that they don’t even make anymore, they can’t even fix anymore, and many controllers must use slips of paper to track our thousands and thousands of planes that are up in the air.

Our air traffic control system was designed when roughly 100,000 people flew at our airports each year. We are now approaching nearly one billion passengers annually. The current system cannot keep up — hasn’t been able to keep up for many years. It causes flight delays and crippling inefficiencies, costing our economy as much as $25 billion a year in economic output. We live in a modern age, yet our air traffic control system is stuck painfully in the past.

The FAA has been trying to upgrade our nation’s air traffic control system for a long period of years. But after billions and billions of tax dollars spent and the many years of delays, we are still stuck with an ancient, broken, antiquated, horrible system that doesn’t work. Other than that, it’s quite good. (Laughter.)

The previous administration spent over $7 billion trying to upgrade the system, and totally failed. Honestly, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. A total waste of money — $7 billion-plus-plus.

It’s time to join the future. That is why I’m proposing new principles to Congress for air traffic control reform making flights quicker, safer and more reliable. Crucially, these reforms are supported by air traffic controllers themselves. They’re the ones that know the systems that they want. They know it better than anybody. And we have people — they don’t even call them in the past. But now we call them.

I’m also proud to be joined today by passenger advocates, pilot unions, and leaders of airlines and cargo companies who strongly support our new framework and our bidding process. And we’re bidding, ideally, to one great company — there will be many bids, but one great company that can piece it all together — not many companies all over the United States, like in the past. When they came time to piece it together, it didn’t work. There were all different systems. We threw away billions and billions of dollars.

I am very grateful that every former FAA chief and chief operating officers and three former Transportation Secretaries — Jim Burnley, Elizabeth Dole, and Mary Peters — stand with us today. Thank you. (Applause.)

This is an incredible coalition for change. All over the room, it’s a coalition for change. The leaders of the industry.

At its core, our new plan will dramatically improve America’s air traffic control system by turning it over to a self-financing, non-profit organization. This new entity will not need taxpayer money, which is very shocking when people hear that. They don’t hear that too often.

Under this new plan, the Federal Aviation Administration will focus firmly on what it does best — safety. A separate non-profit entity would be charged with ensuring route efficiency, timely service, and a long-awaited reduction in delays.

Our plan will also maintain support for rural communities and small airports, including airfields used by our Air National Guard units — great people. And, very importantly, air traffic controllers will highly — and this will be highly valued. These are highly valued people. These are amazing people that know this system so well. And under our plan, they will have more financial security, professional opportunity, and far superior equipment.

The best equipment anywhere in the world. There will never be anything like what we’re doing. And other systems are very good. I won’t tell you the names of the country, but we have studied numerous countries, one in particular — they have a very, very good system. Ours is going to top it by a lot.

Our incredible air traffic controllers keep us safe every day even though they are forced to use this badly outdated system. That is why we want to give them access to capital markets and investors so they can obtain the best, newest, and safest technology available. And by the way, the new technology — and I’ve seen it — is incredible.

If we adopt these changes, Americans can look forward to cheaper, faster, and safer travel — a future where 20 percent of a ticket price doesn’t go to the government, and where you don’t have to sit on a tarmac or circle for hours and hours over an airport — which is very dangerous also — before you land.

Dozens of countries have already made similar changes with terrific results. And we’re going to top them, actually, by a long shot. Canada, as an example, modernized their air traffic control through a non-government organization about 20 years ago, and they have cut costs significantly, adopted cutting-edge technology, and handled 50 percent more traffic — and actually, far more than that on a relative basis compared to us.

A modern air traffic control system will make life better for all Americans who travel, ship, or fly. It will reduce cost and increase convenience for every American consumer — and these new efficiencies will produce a huge economic boost for the country, and for the 1 in 14 American jobs that aviation supports.

Today, we are taking the first important step to clearing the runway for more jobs, lower prices, and much, much, much better transportation. America is the nation that pioneered air travel, and with these reforms, we can once again lead the way far into the future. Our nation will move faster, fly higher, and soar proudly toward the next great chapter of American aviation.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

“The previous administration spent over $7 billion trying to upgrade the system, and totally failed. Honestly, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. A total waste of money — $7 billion-plus-plus”

If I had to guess the billions spent by the obama administration had more to do with lining the pockets of cronies and donors and less to do with improving the system. Same thing that happened with the obamacare online computer sign up failure, ditto the “green energy” boondoggle! Sickening.

7 billion doesn’t just evaporate – that money went somewhere – shouldn’t the GAO be looking into that spending? Shouldn’t there have been a deliverable somewhere since that money was allocated? If a vendor didn’t deliver, shouldn’t the GAO include that in evaluating future contracts?

The airlines are deathly afraid of the liability that would come from having to provide for security, that’s why.
They successfully lobbied for the creation of the TSA for this very reason. Democrats went along with it because all those formerly contracted airline screeners becoming government employees meant a huge increase of government union members. More government union members means more government union dues to spread around to buy elections.

Yes, fire everyone in the TSA and fully privatize airline security. The carriers that do it right (lots of profiling and only natural born Citizen security screeners) would offer the best safety as well as lowest cost. The carriers that do it wrong would quickly go out of business. It would be capitalism at its best.

Uh no. The portion of the FAA that handles air traffic will split off into a new non-profit agency responsible for air traffic. The FAA’s other missions remain in the FAA. Air traffic controllers will likely still be government employees. The new non-profit will simply manage the technology and upkeep of the air traffic system itself. Responsible for the critical infrastructure. The technology certainly exists to vastly improve things but the sheer incompetence of the government ensured it was never properly implemented.

I’m SOOOO EXCITED!!!! As one that has to travel a lot for work, this is going to be wonderful. and unlike previous administrations, I BELIEVE that President Trump will follow-through (isn’t that wonderful? PRESIDENT Trump?) God Bless POTUS Trump and God Bless America!

Remember when he (Trump) was able to re-build the Wollman skating rink in Central park when it had been shut for about seven years and after Mayor Koch had spent millions of dollars and botched the mission to get it up and running. Sometimes petty people just won’t trust a “can do” person. It’s time to give hope a chance. Trust Trump to have the best interest of the American people at the top of his list.

Ultimately, the federal courts can be neutered quite effectively-there are Constitutional provisions allowing Congress to remove subject matter jurisdiction from even the USSCt and to eliminate any federal court except the Supremes-or of course by a President with stones like Jackson, Lincoln or Trump. They have as much power as they are given-never forget that.

This “least dangerous branch” mythology needs to be destroyed and we have the right man to start doing it.

The same people that couldn’t ‘build’ a working website (healthcare.gov) for a huge ($350M-2+B depending on the source) amount of money – something every major company does more effectively at far less cost.

Well it helps if you don’t hire the same company fired by Canada and getting sued over the colossal failure of the Canadian healthcare IT systems. Then add on top of that 3-4 oversight groups without clear direction all feeding changes into the design which didn’t exist. Then the contractor hired nincompoops who couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag then change the design on the fly weekly.

Much of the business logic was actually being performed in the browser in JavaScript and it was making a bazillion connections to different backend systems to complete the enrollment process. If even one of those backend connections became overwhelmed it would time out and you would lose all the hard work you put into registering and have to start all over again. They had serious capacity issues and really bad designs. There are plenty of postmortems that cover the government red tape and confusion, etc. Very few inside views of what was really going on with the technology. The contractor actually had a call center of staff taking calls and trying to submit the enrollments but even they had problems completing and enrollment. On top of all that, security researchers found enormous flaws just begging to let hackers steal confidential information from participants. I am still leery about electronic medical records. I trust the bigger hospitals but the doctors offices are quite frightening when it comes to information security.

60 or countries already have the more advanced system. We are in the stone age. President Trump is going to do this and it will not cost the taxpayers a dime, except for a charge on your plane ticket which will be lower than the 20% the .gov charges now.

No money for the government!!! ???? Dems in Congress going ballistic in 3…2…1

Big Jake, I agree with you general aviation must have a seat at the table. It seems to me rather than a private corporation a quasi-government corporation would be better. Also, you are correct about Congress raiding the fund, on top of that much of the funds they did spend were wasted on graft. It wasn’t just the Obama administration either.

When I see a billion here, a billion or 3 billion there, I have to know that it is going for items prohibited in the constitution and that the middle class is over taxed to the hilt.
That is one thing I do know.
It’s a true wonder that we even still have a travel industry. The taxes on hotels and rental cars is unbelievable. When I fly and rent a car at an airport, sometimes the cost of the rental is only a few dollars more than the taxes charged. Someone in the cities and rental car companies needs a reality check.

I’m at the heart of liberal hell this week, in San Jose, CA at the Apple WWDC event. When news went out that Trump was considering privatizing the FAA you would have thought the sky was falling, literally. OMG Trump is going to kill us all. He’s getting rid of the FAA. We’re going back to he Stone Age. Planes will be crashing into each other left and right. What an idiot he is. God these people are so brainwashed into thinking that the government is our solution for everything. That government can do no wrong. That no business could ever do anything better than government. I had to suck it up and keep my mouth shut. And then at the end of the keynote speech Tim Cook announces to the cheering of all that Michele Obama will be speaking tomorrow on empowering women. I about puked. Like she has so much experience starting businesses, her own fashion line, perfumes, and home accessories. God I hate California.

I currently own the LAST apple product I will ever own. Talk about control and proprietary? I hate APPLE but then again, I love freedom.

I had my I-Phone (the third one finally worked) repaired a couple of months ago by an independent phone repair service. They replaced the charger pack within the phone. Now I can’t download pictures to I – tunes because as the clerk at the APPLE store told me, “they can’t be repaired, you will need to purchase a new phone,” Well, I did find a way outside of APPLE to download and save my pictures but when I finally decide or have to replace my $700.00 phone, it won’t be an APPLE product.

Was working on wall street when President Reagan fired all air traffic controllers. I cheered while people around me said the sky was going to fall – didn’t happen, life went on and I was proud of my President then and I am proud of my President now!

Watched it on the live broadcast, same reaction to the Michelle Obama announcement. I can only imagine the liberal geeks losing their lunch over the Trump air traffic infrastructure announcement. For people who are so logic based in every day work to unplug that logic when it comes to politics is quite strange.

Trump did say one company would be selected. It could be IBM who is now ironically running 90,000 Mac’s worldwide. (Previn Fletcher – Mia Farrow’s son is behind the Mac@IBM project and it’s succeeding tremendously) Apparently, they save $480+ per Mac per year just on refresh and support costs. Every Mac they deploy saves them money. They have a completely automated zero touch deployment. Order a Mac, ship it to the employee still in the shrink-wrap. The employee unwraps it and connects it to the Internet and then it sets itself up completely automatic. When it finishes the user has a custom list of IBM pre-packaged software to choose from and it’s just a few clicks to install it all. Meanwhile the Mac is completely managed by enterprise tools seamlessly to the user. The user can even open the Self-Service app store like system and update their software or remove software, etc. Apparently, they rarely call the help desk because they don’t need to.

Having a state of the art air traffic control system will make an enormous difference. If UPS, FedEx, Amazon, etc. can move that many packages. If Apple can ship tens of millions of iPhones with Airbus 380 and 747’s taking off every few minutes; certainly the air traffic control systems can be fixed and made safer and more efficient.

At one in time the Silicon Valley was comprised of renegades. People who got things done. Guys like Charlie Sporck, founder of National Semiconductor. His philosophy was work your ass off and get things done. Get to work early. You got a good parking space. That included himself.

Now the ‘Valley is comprised of PC wankers; who’s only charter is to become more liberal than the next…Pathetic…

Amazing. Ask some of those programmers tomorrow if they flew in or out of San Francisco this weekend. I sat for 4 hours due to the FAA system not being about to route around their construction delays. What made it awful was sitting in SFO during that delay. I don’t get how engaged entrepreneurial programmers can lament and yearn for a theocratic system of government it is insane.

I am excited about this. It means I can fly to Texas more often to see my son if flying becomes cheaper, and I won’t have to go to Midway. OHare is much closer but I refuse to fly out of that insane nasty airport. TSA people there have been very nasty to me, and the entire airport is woefully behind the times.

Isn’t it wonderful not only believing but seeing that our President just keeps on truckin’! Nothing said about him, no matter how vile, phases his resolve to do what’s right for the American people. Such strong character, such confidence, such care and concern turned into action!

YUP! Lucille you did it, You punched my “OMG!! THANK HEAVEN FOR PRESIDENT DONALD J TRUMP!!!” button. Too late. Now I’m gonna be giving thanks to the Good Lord Above all evening-long – probably even while I’m sleeping.

But it’s okay. I can stand it. I’m old but I’m tough. I’ve had some practice – like since Nov 9 of 2016 – almost EVERY WAKING MOMENT! (Go ahead! Punch it again! LOL!)

I certainly hope getting shed of the ridiculous “hub and spoke” system responsible for much of the congestion is a part of the plan. Used to drive me nuts having to fly to Detroit or Pittsburg to get to Houston, or even worse having to backtrack to Atlanta to eventually wend my way to Birmingham, AL .

I can’t wait for the infrastructure part of the Trump Agenda. Every time I go over an old bridge I cross my fingers, say a prayer. Some bridges here were traveled by horse and buggy. One of them is a major bridge with lots of traffic. In an earthquake zone…. in the Ring of Fire….

The engineering and craftsmanship of that time was extraordinary, but ‘horse and buggy’? Sometimes I think it’s suicidal the way government is run. Thank God for President Trump.

Is this going to be a good thing for air travellers, and a good deal for American taxpayers? What. exactly, is he proposing? Will the taxpayers be paying a Company that “subcontracts” all of the nation’s air control needs?

Trump is MAGA in a rapid fire pace. A pace so rapid-fire and great the Libtards cannot keep up. Trump is not giving the lazy incompetent Libtards time to regroup with their Trump attacks before Trump has fired off another MAGA.

Watch Libtards bog themselves down with their corrupt, crooked, criminal Democrats as the swamp is being drained. While they are occupied defending their crooks, Trump will be implementing more MAGA with the speed of heat.

fangdog, I wanna see our Lion make the libtards BEG for the days of “Muh Russia”. LOL! I wanna see President Donald J Trump LAUGHING while they’re whining about the “good old days” when they controlled the narrative and all the rest of us are SHOUTING: “NO MR. PRESIDENT! We CAN stand it, Sir! PLEASE, MORE WINNING!”

Radar is still needed because it is the only way to track targets that are not otherwise reporting codes ID codes. That said. Most all aircraft will be navigating GPS routes and approaches. Position reporting will be through the ADS-B system.

The GPS routes is the key. That’s where the savings are. Right now all commercial aircraft in the U.S. are flying an outdated “roads in the sky” system with waypoints deviating from direct point to pointdestinations and it is terribly congested because of spacing. Think LA freeways at 5:00 PM.

We have the greatest ATC system in Earth. I do this for a living. Nobody comes close to doing it as well as we do. And don’t kid yourselves, satellite-based control has its own risks. The ground based radar system should not be casually tossed aside.

This is one area where Trump is wrong at least in part. We are going to wind up like Nigeria where the airlines have all the advantages and one has to walk over to the local tower guy and pay a fee to fly.

The fuel tax works. The only problem it has is Congress raiding the fund for other purposes.

No no no to privatization. If the FAA wants to contract out some of its facilities like it has been doing but on a larger scale, fine. But God help us when the airline lobby controls the “independent” board.

I too believe this to be a major mistake with as much merit as Bammy turning ICANN over to the UN……US airspace management IS a national security issue and their attempt to tout this proposed “upgrades” as beneficial b/c others are doing it shoots their own argument down

while we are at it we should just privatize the US military and Coast Guard for efficiency and costs savings /s

I agree with you Jake, I have concerns about this proposal too. My husband was an ATC at an enroute facility for 32 years so I have some knowledge of the system. I could see ramping up privatizing smaller airports, but the enroute centers, central flow and the larger tracons no. I feel a little better that it will be a non-profit, but I still feel like we’re just handing it over to the airlines.

The government should maintain some control. I remember W was hot to trot to privatize ATC and then 9-11 happened. Easy to ground all the planes when you’re the boss, think about that.

The fuel tax does work and the ATC system could be self funded by it, but Congress dips into the cookie jar. I do agree that the contracts are a huge mess and wasteful, surely there is a way to fix that without the drastic measure of privatizing.

As a Private Pilot ( not current ) I am waiting for Senator Jim Inhofe to opine as to the effects it may have on General Aviation. I have met the Senator @ Oshkosh, and he is probably the only Advocate in the House and Senate General Aviation has. So far the Gen-Av websites / Writers are very nervous. If user fees come to Gen-Av it is done, and it isn’t healthy now. Fuel Prices, Tort Liability, and years of kids more interested in their “devices” vs learning to Fly has this feeder to the majors in trouble as the pilot population is becoming increasing gentrified. If you know an Airline Pilot speak to them of the upcoming shortage in 5 years and what the numbers are, they are staggering 20,000 is the number I keep hearing, from my Airline Pilot friend. The Countries that have gone to user fees have killed Gen-Av. After years of being interested in Aviation I have noticed a healthy Gen-Av system equals Liberty, and absence of Gen-Av means you have lost Liberty.

With “AirVenture” the annual Flying extravaganza occurring in late July in Oshkosh Wisconsin, one would hope Gov. Walker, Paul Ryan, and Rince Pirebus would invite President Trump to this event to talk to the Gen Av community, of which 90%+ is my guess are “Deporables” to get their take on this as to not potentially ruin the feeder to the majors. On top of that he might have a blast looking at Classic, Warbirds, and Homebuilt Aircraft, and not to mention, an Air Show that is one of the best, if not The Best!

Ah, Canada Big Jake, their system is very similar to what Trump is proposing in terms of procurement is out of the Feds hands so the latest and greatest get their quicker, again the problem for Gen Av is do they have to pay for every takeoff and landing or is the “Flat Tax” ( yes it is ) current Fuel Tax system sufficient and a carve out? That is the million dollar question…

My husband said the same thing, not enough concrete and weather. Only so many planes can take off or land at a given time and only so many gates. We need more airports, but people don’t want airports near their homes and the tree huggers don’t want them anywhere. Even if you have more concrete, there is only so much airspace around major cities like NYC, doesn’t matter what kind of ATC equipment you have.

As for paper strips they don’t use those anymore except for training and I’m 90% sure they have stopped using strips and any form of non-radar training. There could be some small facilities somewhere that use them, but I assure you the busy facilities don’t and haven’t in decades.

NASA developed a program that really reduces delays and more tightly times take off and landing times. That program is part of the modernization, but the whole thing is off the chain with delays and graft. Somehow the FAA ends up paying a contractor for a program NASA wrote and they also pay a middle man every time they need tweaks, why I have no idea…..NASA and FAA are both government why pay a series of contractors to be your go betweens??

Check out Memphis TN. They have a huge airport and the local government has managed to shut down and shut out major airlines. It used to be a bustling airport but many times it serves as a vacant funeral home. There is one huge terminal shuttered off from any foot traffic. Independent retailers have always been limited to “black owned” and there are many who have gone out of business. I never understood the preferential treatment on that issue.

Don’t arrive before 6:00 a.m. or you can’t even get a cup of coffee…and they will be rude as heck to you as you stir your coffee too.

It wasn’t for nothing, improvements have been made but the delays continue. There are also bugs to be worked out in computer programs. However, as someone with a bit of an inside view of the modernization process…..hello, there is a lot of graft in those contracts.

Personally, I don’t care about “union slackers” that aren’t government employees. The market will correct that in due time.
I was keenly aware of the PATCO strike as friends and neighbors were employees on both sides of the issue and saw the evil things union people did to those who went and did their jobs because of their commitment to keep the skies safe. It made me certain that no government unions should be tolerated at any level. Time to revisit and abolish the idea of the right to organize if you are a “public servant” i.e. government employee.

I married an airline transport pilot. Worked for four carriers myself. Airline personnel have known for years the current system isn’t working.

But Trump makes a fundamental error when he says the FAA can now concentrate on safety. Wrong. That’s the job of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The FAA is riddled with career flunkies whose primary focus is not safety, but their own jobs. Hopefully, the new system will eliminate a lot of them. It would be simpler if we simply abolished the FAA. They politicized themselves into irrelevance long ago.